People of the Whirlpool eBook

“Thank you, dear Richard, for your brotherly
letter. I make no protestations, for I know your
invitation would not be given if you felt my presence
would in any way be a drawback or impose care on any
member of your household, and the four little hearts
that Barbara drew, with her own, Evan’s, and
the boys’ initials in them, are seals upon the
invitation.

“Do not deplore, however, the lack of nearness
of my haunts in Astor and Lenox libraries. Times
are changed, and the new order condemns me to sit
here if I read, there if I take out pencil and pad
to copy—­the red tape distracts me.
The old Historical Society alone remains in comfortable
confusion, and that is soon to move upward half a day’s
walk.

“But, as it chances, you have collected many
of the volumes that are necessary to me, and I will
use them freely, for some day, friend of mine, my
books will be joined to yours, and also feel the touch
of little Richard’s and Ian’s fingers,
and of their sons, also, I hope.

“I declare, I’m growing childishly expectant
and impatient for spring, like Barbara with her packages
of flower seeds.

“You ask if I ever remember meeting one Lavinia
Dorman. I think I used to see her with a bevy
of girls from Miss Black’s school, who used sometimes
to attend lectures at the Historical Society rooms,
and had an unlimited appetite for the chocolate and
sandwiches that were served below in the ‘tombs’
afterward, which appetite I may have helped to appease,
for you know father was always a sort of mine host
at those functions.

“The girls must have all been eight or ten years
my junior, and you know how a fellow of twenty-three
or four regards giggling schoolgirls—­they
seem quite like kittens to him.

“Stop, was she one of the older girls, the special
friend of—­Barbara’s mother?
If so, I remember her face, though she did not walk
in the school procession with the other ‘convicts,’
as the boys called them; but I was never presented.

“I’m sending a small birthday token to
the boys—­a little printing-press.
Richard showed no small skill in setting the letters
of my rubber stamp. It is some days late, but
that will separate it from the glut of the Christmas
market. Ask Evan to notify me if he and Barbara
go to town.

“Gratefully,

“M. C.”

IV

WHEN BARBARA GOES TO TOWN

March 4. I like to go to a plain people’s
play, where the spectators groan and hiss the villain.
It is a wholesome sort of clearing house where one
may be freed from pent-up emotion under cover of other
people’s tears and smiles; the smiles triumphing
at the end, which always winds up with a sudden recoil,
leaving the nerves in a healthy thrill. I believe
that I can only comprehend the primal emotions and
what is called in intellectual jargon mental dissipation,
and the problem play, in its many phases, appeals
to me even less than crude physical dissipation.